


Into the Stormy Weather

by tyelperin



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Canon Compliant until Ep. 5, Deep emotional connection, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-14
Updated: 2015-08-14
Packaged: 2018-04-14 14:32:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4568073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyelperin/pseuds/tyelperin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn’t feeling alpha. All he was feeling, as he retraced his steps back to the dorms, was a sense of dread threatening to chill his bones, the dull ache of his knuckles, the sharp sting of his teeth on his lip.</p>
<p>Warren needs to apologize, after what he's done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. All gone

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by [parapines](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Parapines/pseuds/Parapines), who suffered with me.
> 
> TW: Suicidal thoughts, dissociation, abuse aftermaths, self loathing, guns, meds (mention, not consumption), alcohol (mention, not consumption).  
> A very heavy piece, emotionally speaking. Needed to write it, anyway. There is no sexual content, rating chosen for the themes portrayed. May have a third part, but marked as finished for now.

_I take a pistol and I blow my brain_  
_I blow it out the window_  
_The little thing was always acting strange_  
_And thinking like a devil_  
  
_I'm getting close to reinventing me, yeah_  
_Zeroing my levels_  
_I get the feeling that it will not be_  
_At all or any better, better, better_  
_(All gone – Mother Mother)_

 

                He wasn’t feeling alpha. All he was feeling, as he retraced his steps back to the dorms, was a sense of dread threatening to chill his bones, the dull ache of his knuckles, the sharp sting of his teeth on his lip.

                There had been a second, when the gun had appeared, when he had felt that it was justified. Hitting him, throwing him to the floor, kicking him with all he got. Because Nathan was going to hurt his friends, Nathan was going to hurt them and he had to stop him. Nathan was the one who needed to be restrained.

                Warren crosses the door and there are drops of blood where Nathan had curled in on himself. There’s a feeling of hollowness in his chest, a deep void that’s filled slowly with self loathing so sharp that he’s left with no strength, no will to move, nowhere to go and nothing to feel. It’s bliss, up until it all comes back crashing into him.

                Nathan didn’t fight back after the gun got kicked out of his hand, he didn’t even fight back when he pulled it out. He curled, and he stayed, and he let Warren kick him and punch his face. And now Warren knows, it’s clear as day in his mind, that he cried. That he asked him to stop and that he apologized. Nathan apologized while Warren slammed his fist on his face.

                He’s moving, and he doesn’t notice until he’s standing between his door and Nathan’s. Warren glances at Nathan’s door and his breath catches in his throat. He has to choose, now, if he enters that room and tries to apologize or if he’d rather crawl in his own bed with his own misery, feeling sorry for turning into the kind of person that he never wanted to be.

xXx

                Pain, failure, red. His father’s voice whispering in his ear. You have failed again, you are nothing, you’re not fit for your destiny, you’re never going to make me proud, you are nothing.

                Where there was rage, now there’s distress. They’ll find out. They took his phone.  The others will know. He failed again. Again. He has failed. Again. There are going to be consequences, that he’s going to have to face. Again. Again. Red, pain and failure and his father’s voice inside his head, and the pills scattered on the floor, and the smell of blood and booze, and the feeling of dust on his tongue.

                He hugs his knees, on his bed, breathing deep. In and out, in and out, in and out. Has to actively give himself the order to breath, because if not he’d suffocate. He’s suffocating, anyway. There’s only hatred, only pain, only red and pain and pain and red. And maybe it would be easier if he stopped thinking about how to breath, maybe it would be for the better if he gave up.

                A thing, a tool, nothing. No one. Nothing. No shit. No son, no friend, no photographer, no artist, no soul. No Prescott, though that may have been good if it were true.

                “They all hate me…” he mumbles, and it sounds like a roar. Like a scream. Right in his ears, ringing in the aftermath. They hate him, and with good reason. What is he, what has he become?  With all he’s done.

                Rachel in the dark room.

                Nathan closes his eyes, claws at his arms over the jacket. Rachel in the dark room.

                Kate. He didn’t hurt Kate.

                Chloe. He couldn’t hurt Chloe.

                But he can always hurt himself.

xXx

                Warren doesn’t knock, he tries the handle and the door opens and he stops in the threshold with his heart clawing up his throat. Nathan’s got the gun in his hand. It takes enough time for Warren to register that it’s not pointing at him for Nathan to point it at himself and Warren’s running, inside the room and to Nathan and he prays that his finger isn’t on the trigger.

                The gun clatters to the floor and Nathan stares at his own hand. There’s no shock in his eyes, there’s nothing in his eyes and the chill running deep inside Warren’s bones breaks into his skin.

                “Why,” Nathan’s voice is cracked, barely a whisper. “Why the fuck have you done that, you shit."

                Warren raises his hands as he kneels in front of the bed and Nathan jerks, away and wide eyed, gasps sorry over and over until Warren’s knees hit the floor, and this is not what he expected. He expected Nathan to punch him, claw at him, spit his name and bite him until he bled. He expected punishment, he expected a chance to redeem himself with the thought that Nathan really was an awful person. Not apologies, not blood and bruises fresh on Nathan’s face but not on his own skin.

                “No…no don’t apologize,” Nathan sits up on the bed, doesn’t even yelp at the pain. He sits up and stares at Warren and there’s a deep feeling there, there’s grief in the way he looks and in the way he’s not jumping at Warren’s throat. “I’m the one who has to apologize.”

                There’s no answer. Nathan’s eyes shift to where the gun rests on the floor and his chin falls to his chest. Warren can do nothing but look as Nathan’s shoulders start to shake. As he grips at his own face with shaking fingers.

                Or so he thinks. What can he do, what can he possibly do to comfort Nathan? What does he know about Nathan, what did he know about himself up to the moment when he was on his knees punching his face?

                Nathan apologizes again, with a voice that is like a thread about to snap, he cries, he asks why, he mumbles that he may be broken, that everybody hates him, he breathes out stop stop stop stop stop stop. And Warren never would have thought of Nathan as what he’s seeing, what is unfurling right in front of him, and he itches because it’s uncomfortable, the idea of him as a human being that’s so broken that he can point a gun at himself with empty eyes.

                Warren breaths, the smell of blood and alcohol setting deep in his lungs, and reaches out.

xXx

                Cold. It’s cold. And it hurts. His nails hurt, on his face. Red. He could call Victoria but she doesn’t have to see him like this, she can’t. He only has small breakdowns. That’s it. Nothing else. No cold, no pain, no red. Small breakdowns. This is a small breakdown.

                Warm. It’s warm. And he doesn’t know why, and he doesn’t want to pick between his fingers because it could be his father, and his father’s warmth is the kind that he doesn’t want. He craves it, but it hurts.

              Whispering, there’s whispering. In his ear. It’s warm. It’s blue. Breath. Breath. In and out, in and out. It’s ok, Nathan. It’s ok, I’m here. I’m here, Nathan please don’t do this, Nathan you’re not alone.

                Nathan drops his hands on his lap and registers the arms around his shoulders. It’s not his father and he breaths, notices that hasn’t been as his lungs burn with each intake of air.

                He is not alone.

                He remembers Warren being there, his hands rising and the cold. The cold. But now it’s gone.

                Something breaks, and for the first time in so long, so long, it’s not him. Nathan clutches at Warren’s shirt, buries his face in the curve of his neck and cries in the way that makes his throat burn and his mouth taste like blood.

                It’s warm. Warmth, pain and blue. He didn’t hurt them, he didn’t hurt them, he didn’t hurt them. He’s saying it out loud and Warren’s nodding, even though he doesn’t know what he’s done. I didn’t hurt them, I never hurt them, I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t. I’m trapped, they keep pushing me, everybody keeps pushing me, I don’t want to take the pills, I don’t want to be.

                It’s a river, his entire being, pouring out of his mouth. It cascades into Warren, crashes against him until Nathan feels empty and dry.

                Warmth, pain and blue. A whispering in his ear. Stay, Nathan. Don’t leave, Nathan.

                You’re human, Nathan.

                 

 


	2. Give me fire, burning hell

_Back in the head where I see red_  
_Where the beast and the beauty coalesce_  
_I give in to a morbid fantasy_  
_Death to a billion families and me_  
  
_Give me fire, burning hell_  
_Throw it on my paper trail_  
_And I’ll watch as all the numbers go_  
_Up in a cloud of dark and dirty smoke_  
_(Waiting for the world to end – Mother Mother)_

 

                They cry. He clutches Nathan’s jacket, fingers digging in his back, tears running down his own shirt and down Nathan’s neck. And Nathan trembles, as if he were afraid. Nathan cries himself raw, he feels him turning inside out in his arms, and it comes down on him, how wrong they all could’ve been. Nathan crashes into him, and Warren looks over his shoulder trying to reign over himself. And notices the pills.

                Diazepam. Risperidone. Maybe paroxetine. Bottles of beer and blue capsules scattered on the floor. He notices the dark. He notices the cold.

                Warren notices too many things at once and he cries harder into Nathan’s shirt because sometimes, sometimes life isn’t fair and it eats at you and it claws at your skin and it devours you only to spit you out, half chewed and bleeding. He thinks of all the things that are written on campus, of all the things that Nathan himself has done.

                I didn’t hurt them, Nathan said, and he doesn’t know if it’s true. He doesn’t know much, Warren realizes. He only knows the bad and the ugly, and now the raw grief and the agony, too. 

                You’re human, Nathan. It’s as much a revelation to him as it might be for Nathan. He’s human, he suffers. He endures. He bleeds. He cries. He points a gun at himself. There’s no way Warren can know what’s going on with him, what pushed him – they all keep pushing me, he’d mumbled – into that.

                Nathan’s fists tighten on his shirt, tug on him even though Warren can’t get closer that he already is.

                “I’m so sorry, Nathan,” he’s so sorry for so many things, even those that he can’t know.

                Even those that he’s afraid to know.

xXx

                Sorry. Sorry, He’s so sorry. Sorry sorry sorry he’s sorry he keeps doing this, he’s sorry he can’t control himself, he’s sorry for dragging Warren down with him. Sorry for keeping the blue and the calm and the tears for him. Sorry. He’s so sorry. So sorry for being, so sorry for doing, so sorry for never being able to be.

                It itches, his skin, and he has to tighten his grasp on Warren’s shirt to stop himself from trying to tear it apart. Blue, blue, waves of blue. Pain, like the beating of his heart. Like the beating in his skull. Warmth, bittersweet on his tongue. Warren’s voice, whispering in his ear, drowning his father.

                Their tears are warm. Warmth. Their tears are blue, their tears are pain. Pain pain pain so deep, so deep that he can’t reach.

                For now, though. For now he’s not alone. For now.

                Don’t leave, don’t leave, don’t leave.  Warren is cradling him, swaying back and forth, he’s whispering in his ear. I’m staying, Nathan. Stay, Nathan.

                His throwaway phone starts ringing in his jeans’ pocket.

                No. Not now. Not now. Not now that he has no more tears to shed, not now that blue and warmth, and blue, are cleansing his blood. Not now that he’s human, for a few minutes before reality comes back.

                Not now.

xXx

                A phone rings and Nathan tenses and Warren wants to scream. A hand moves slowly away from his shirt and Warren has a feeling that he has to stop this, to stop Nathan from answering that call.

                You don’t have to answer it, you really don’t. Nathan, you don’t have to if you don’t want to. And Nathan looks at him, and Warren sees that he does. He has to answer that phone, even though he doesn’t want to. It’s in his eyes, it’s in the way his jaw is set, fear.

                So Warren sits with him, powerless. Grips the hand that’s not holding the phone and holds his breath.

                Nathan grips his hand back.

xXx

                He has to go. Blue and red, colliding. Pain. A rush of cold but his fingers are warm, warmth up his arm that dies before reaching his neck. Cold from his phone, down to his feet. Jefferson’s voice, whispering in his ear. Come, you have to come. They know you failed. They know and you have to come, you have to be here. You have to fix this, Nathan. Fix this.

                They keep pushing him. They keep trying to control him.

                Warren gasps and Nathan notices, distantly, that he’s gripping his fingers too tight. He loses his grasp but doesn’t let go. He needs this now. An anchor. Don’t stress, count to three. Don’t stress, count to three. Don’t stress, count to three.

                “I’m going to fucking fight this,” he’s aware that he’s talked, but at the same time he doesn’t feel like he’s said nothing at all. He only feels the turmoil inside himself, the mist of the sea falling on fire, the sizzling of it. Boiling, hot. Warmth, again, rushing  through his veins. “They can’t control me anymore.”

                They won’t. They can’t push him anymore. Not today, at least. He failed and he’s going to fix it.

                It pains him, letting go of Warren’s hand, and he’s drifting away but his voice is still there, like a beckon. I don’t know what’s going on, Nathan. I don’t know. You’re not alone, Nathan. You’re going to fight this. But you’re human, Nathan, you feel.

                Come back, Nathan.

                He’s at the door, the gun is in his pocket. It weights him down, makes his steps heavy, but he needs it. To feel powerful, to feel in control.

                Blue and red, in a whirlwind.

                Nathan looks back. Warren, sitting  cross legged on his bed. The bang of his door, and a whisper.

                Come back.

               

xXx

                He’s drunk.       

                He’s still feeling the sharp intensity of Nathan’s eyes, walking out the door. How the void that he found when he entered the room was full of life when Nathan left. 

                He’s afraid.

                Chloe and Max are there, and he needs to feel normal again. Warren needs proof that he’s alive, that he’s awake, and that what happened in Nathan’s room was real. He asks Max for a photo, Chloe leaves.

                He just wants to feel normal after the week’s ultraviolence.

                Come back.


End file.
